Klopp revealed the secret flight with which Liverpool tried to sign Mbappé before PSG
Jürgen Klopp has once again opened up one of the most intriguing stories from his era at Anfield: Liverpool's failed attempt to sign Kylian Mbappé from Monaco before the French forward ended up at Paris Saint-Germain in 2017. According to the Guardian's report on Klopp's appearance on the German television channel MagentaTV, the former Liverpool manager described an operation that involved a private plane, a discreet meeting with the player and his family, and an effort to persuade one of the world's most sought-after young footballers at the time to believe in the Anfield project. Klopp called the episode Liverpool's most expensive "non-transfer", alluding not only to the cost of organizing the meeting but also to the symbolic value of the player who slipped away from the club. His words suggest that Liverpool at that moment believed they had a unique, perhaps even the last realistic, chance to complete the transfer before Mbappé became financially unattainable for almost all European clubs. Although the deal was never concluded, the story further shows how seriously Liverpool followed Mbappé's development while he was still a teenager at Monaco.
Private plane, secrecy and talks above the Côte d'Azur
According to Klopp's account relayed by the Guardian, Liverpool's delegation flew from Blackpool to Nice, where Mbappé and his family boarded a private plane. Klopp said the flight was organized so that talks could be held far from the public eye, so the plane, according to his testimony, circled while negotiations were taking place on board and a meal was being served. The former manager also stressed that Liverpool "could not be seen", which points to the level of discretion that accompanied the attempt to sign the then Monaco forward. Such meetings are not unusual in top-level football, but they are rarely described publicly in such detail, especially when they involve a player who later became one of the biggest stars in world football. Klopp's anecdote therefore does not come across merely as an entertaining retrospective, but also as an insight into the way elite clubs try to gain an advantage in the race for the most desirable talents.
The Guardian states that Klopp spoke about all of this after, as a television pundit, he covered the match between France and Morocco at the 2026 World Cup. According to the same report, Klopp placed Mbappé's case within a broader series of unsuccessful attempts during his career to sign certain French players, also mentioning other footballers who ultimately chose a different path. Particularly striking is his wording about "approximately 500 million euros" and the most expensive non-transfer, which should be understood as a humorous and vivid estimate of the value of a missed opportunity, not as an officially confirmed transfer offer. Liverpool did not announce that they had sent a formal offer for Mbappé at that moment, nor were the financial details of any potential package publicly confirmed. According to the available information, Klopp's story about an exceptionally ambitious attempt has been confirmed, but not the full financial framework of the negotiations.
Why Mbappé was such an important target in 2017
To understand why Liverpool were prepared for such an unusual operation, it is necessary to go back to the 2016/17 season, when Monaco were one of the most exciting surprises in European football. AS Monaco state in the club's review that the team won the French championship with 95 points and 107 goals scored, while Mbappé, in his first full professional breakthrough, scored 15 league goals and added 8 assists, and at the age of 18 was named the league's best young player. The same context explains why Europe's biggest clubs recognized at the time that this was not only a talent, but a footballer who was already changing matches at senior level. Monaco also reached the semi-finals of the Champions League that season, and Mbappé's performances in the knockout stage strengthened the impression that he was a forward of exceptional speed, composure and maturity. For Liverpool, who under Klopp were then building a team capable of returning to the European summit, such a player could have become the foundation of a long-term sporting project.
Klopp arrived at Liverpool in 2015 and gradually built a team that would later win the Champions League and the Premier League, but in 2017 the club was still in a phase of rapid ascent. Liverpool's official website states in the German coach's profile that Klopp's tenure ended in 2024, after 491 matches, and that his departure marked the end of the longest spell by one manager on the club's bench since Bob Paisley. At the moment when Mbappé's arrival was being considered, Liverpool did not have the status of European champions, but they offered a clear style of play, a growing project and a manager with a reputation for working with young players. That could have been precisely the centre of the club's argument in the conversation with the Mbappé family: Anfield as a stage on which an elite talent would develop in a system of high pressing, fast transitions and intense attacking football. But the market dynamic was such that PSG could offer a different combination of sporting, financial and personal context.
PSG won the race, and Liverpool were left with a huge "what if"
Mbappé eventually moved to Paris Saint-Germain on 31 August 2017, initially on loan from Monaco. Sportsnet's reports at the time stated that the financial details were not officially disclosed, but that there had been widespread reporting about the deal being worth around 180 million euros, with a permanent contract that would run from 2018 to 2022. The Guardian also states in the current report that Mbappé first arrived at PSG on loan, and then permanently for 180 million euros. This made the transfer one of the most important deals of the modern market, especially because it happened in the same summer in which PSG had already signed Neymar from Barcelona for a world-record fee. For Liverpool, the end of the saga meant that an extremely ambitious idea was reduced to a story that for years was retold only in fragments, until Klopp described it again in detail.
Mbappé's decision to choose PSG also had a logical sporting side. He is a Parisian player born in the suburb of Bondy, and PSG offered him the status of a central French project at a club that had strong domestic dominance and great ambitions in the Champions League. Liverpool, on the other hand, had a strong development argument, but not the same financial position in the battle for a player whose value was rising from week to week. According to the Guardian, an additional curiosity in the story is the fact that Mbappé's mother Fayza Lamari is a Liverpool supporter, which may have opened a communication channel, but obviously was not enough to change the final decision. In top-level transfers, emotional elements sometimes carry weight, but in this case the decisive factors were a combination of the sporting path, PSG's market power and Mbappé's personal decision. Liverpool were therefore left without a player who could have radically changed the club's attacking future, but they nevertheless soon found their own path to the top.
What the story says about Klopp's Liverpool
Klopp's anecdote is important also because it breaks down the simplified image of Liverpool as a club that, during his time, relied exclusively on cautious, data-driven and financially measured transfers. Liverpool were indeed known for selective investment, but the attempt to sign Mbappé shows that the club were ready to think extremely ambitiously when an opportunity opened up for a player they believed belonged to the highest category. In that sense, the private flight to Nice can be read as an example of a club that did not merely react to the market, but tried to anticipate it. Still, the very fact that the transfer was not realized is a reminder that even the best organized approach, the charisma of a manager and a strong sporting plan do not guarantee success when the world's biggest talents are involved. In modern football, decisions of that scale depend on family, agents, financial frameworks, the speed of negotiations, the competitive status of clubs and the player's personal vision.
Liverpool then turned to other solutions and very quickly assembled one of the most efficient attacking lines in Europe. Mohamed Salah arrived in the summer of 2017, Sadio Mané was already an important part of Klopp's system, and Roberto Firmino grew into the tactical axis that connected pressing and attack. That team played in the Champions League final in 2018, won the European title in 2019, and in 2020 brought Liverpool their first league title of the Premier League era. For that reason, the failed attempt to sign Mbappé cannot be viewed as a turning point that stopped the club, but rather as a parallel history of a project that achieved its most important goals even without the Frenchman. Still, it is hard to ignore the question of what Liverpool would have looked like with Mbappé in a system that already had exceptional speed, aggression and room for attacking explosion. That is precisely why Klopp's story resonates so strongly: it combines real transfer ambition with the footballing imagination of a team that never happened.
Mbappé's career after the missed opportunity
After leaving for PSG, Mbappé became one of the biggest names in world football, and in 2024 Real Madrid officially announced that they had agreed a five-year contract with him. In the official announcement about the signing, Real Madrid stated that Mbappé became their player after being welcomed at the club's facilities by president Florentino Pérez, and the club also emphasized that the French forward received the number nine shirt. This ended one of the longest transfer sagas in European football, but it also further confirmed why Liverpool's interest in 2017 was so understandable. The clubs that tried to sign him before PSG were not looking merely for a potential first-team player, but for a player who would define an entire generation. In that context, Klopp's statement is not only a recollection of a failed agreement, but also confirmation that Liverpool recognized very early a footballer whose career would later take on global proportions.
Today, 11 July 2026, the story is attracting attention again because it comes at a moment when Klopp and Mbappé have found themselves in the public spotlight during the World Cup. According to the Guardian, Klopp presented the details in a television setting connected with France's match, which gave the old transfer episode new visibility. Although it is an event from 2017, its significance is not only nostalgic. It is a reminder that the history of great clubs consists not only of signatures that ended up on front pages, but also of negotiations that remained behind closed doors. Sometimes precisely those failed attempts best reveal the ambitions, priorities and limits of a sporting project. Liverpool's secret flight to Nice therefore remains one of the most interesting unrealized stories of the Klopp era: serious enough that the club pushed discretion to its limits because of it, but insufficient to change the decision of a player who ultimately chose Paris.
The broader significance of an unrealized transfer
In football terms, Klopp's recollection shows how early the biggest clubs must act when a player of exceptional class appears. Mbappé was already publicly recognized at Monaco as an elite talent, but in 2017 he did not yet have the status he would later acquire at PSG, Real Madrid and the French national team. Liverpool, according to Klopp's story, tried to use precisely that transitional moment: late enough to see the full potential, but early enough for the transfer to still be imaginable at all. The failure of such an attempt does not mean that the strategy was wrong, but that at the highest level of the market, sporting arguments compete with financial conditions, personal preferences and speed of execution that often overpower them. In practice, a "non-transfer" sometimes says almost as much as a transfer, because it reveals the limits to which a club was prepared to go.
For Liverpool's history under Klopp, this episode will remain an addition, not the central chapter. In the years that followed, the club proved that top results could be achieved even without the player who slipped away, while Mbappé built a path that took him from Monaco through Paris to Madrid. Still, Klopp's description of the private plane, circling above the Côte d'Azur and the family meeting offers a rare glimpse into the discreet space of transfer negotiations, which the public usually sees only through clubs' final announcements. In that space, nuances, impressions and convictions decide matters, but so does the cold assessment of a career. Liverpool lost that race, PSG gained one of the most important players of their era, and football gained another story that will return whenever people discuss how close Kylian Mbappé once was to Anfield.
Sources:
- The Guardian – report on Klopp's statement for MagentaTV, the private flight and Liverpool's attempt to sign Kylian Mbappé (link)
- Liverpool FC – official profile of Jürgen Klopp and context of his tenure at Anfield (link)
- AS Monaco – club review of the 2016/17 season, the league title, Mbappé's output and young-player status (link)
- Real Madrid CF – official announcement of Mbappé signing a five-year contract with the club in 2024 (link)
- Sportsnet – report on Mbappé's move from Monaco to PSG in 2017 and the financial framework of the deal reported at the time (link)